The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today denounced US President Barrack Obama and Gloria Arroyo for forging a “deal” over the phone this weekend to push on with the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) amid intense criticisms against it and widespread calls for its abrogation.

The CPP noted how giddy the Malacañang officials have become over the brief telephone call that the puppet president finally got from her new imperialist master. “Obama, however, was not really returning long-unanswered calls, but just made the gesture of a call to arm-twist the lameduck puppet president into agreeing not to touch at all the VFA, or else…” the CPP said.

“Obama cajoled Arroyo into promising not to abrogate the VFA in the face of amplified calls by the Filipino people for its immediate abrogation,” the CPP stated in a release issued today by its Information Bureau. “They want an end to the VFA for its clear non-mutuality and one-sidedness, its incongruence to Philippine sovereignty and its injustice to Filipino victims of crimes and abuses by US military personnel in the country.”

“The Filipino people are infuriated at how the VFA and its erstwhile secret VFA-2 attachment are being used by the US in refusing to yield custody to the Philippine penal system of a US military personnel convicted for the rape of a Filipina at the Subic Freeport in 2007.”

“Obviously, Obama’s Philippine agenda goes beyond the VFA. Obama seeks to perpetuate the US’ permanent military presence in the Philippines, its military interventionism in the local civil war and its continued use of the country as a base for military dominance and front for its continuing war of terror in the Asia-Pacific region,” added the CPP.

“Despite his seemingly anti-Bush rhetoric, Obama’s foreign policy agenda is revealing itself to be not at all different from the worn out ‘war against terror’ agenda of the Bush regime,” said the CPP. “As expected, Obama continues to work within the frame of US imperialist hegemonism and its wars of aggression, military interventionism, proxy wars and arm-twisting diplomacy against patriotic forces, anti-imperialist movements and governments that defend their national sovereignty,” said the CPP.